[Rhodes22-list] Hey Slim, A Wall Street Journal Article for You!

Sat Mar 19 03:38:35 EST 2005

On 3/17/05 2:30 PM, "Steve Alm" <salm at mn.rr.com> wrote:

> Brad,
> 
> Fun stuff--thank you!  Since I play in a piano bar, the most requested song
> is of course Billy Joel's Piano Man, which we usually do a couple times a
> night depending on the motivation (wink).  If we start to get tired of it,
> which we did about fifteen years ago, we just start making up our own words.
> Then comes Margarittaville, Brown Eyed Girl, Great Balls of Fire and Sweet
> Home Alabama.  THEN Freebird! (a cry for help)  Now they all have new words.
> Stairway To Heaven is now the same melody, but the words are Gilligan's
> Island.  8-)  Not everyone thinks that's funny.  Some see it as sacrilege,
> but hey, who's the one with the microphone here?  We try to do all the
> requests, but there's no telling what version you might get.  The unspoken
> rule is the higher the motiva$ion, the closer to the original.  Oh, you want
> the REAL Freebird?  The WHOLE Freebird?  That'll cost ya!  8-)
> 
> Slim
> 
> On 3/17/05 12:51 PM, "brad haslett" <flybrad at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
>> 
>>      
>> March 17, 2005 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Rock's Oldest Joke:
>> Yelling 'Freebird!'
>> In a Crowded Theater
>> 
>> It's a Request, a Rebuke,
>> A Cry From the Heart,
>> A Tribute to Skynyrd
>> By JASON FRY 
>> THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
>> March 17, 2005; Page A1
>> 
>> One recent Tuesday night at New York's Bowery
>> Ballroom, the Crimea had just finished its second
>> song. The Welsh quintet's first song had gone over
>> fairly well, the second less so, and singer/guitarist
>> Davey MacManus looked out at the still-gathering
>> crowd.
>> 
>> Then, from somewhere in the darkness came the cry,
>> "Freebird!"
>> 
>> It made this night like so many other rock 'n' roll
>> nights in America.
>> 
>> THE FREEBIRD FILES
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Please note: RealPlayerG21 is required for these
>> files.
>> 
>> "Freebird" has been a rallying cry for fans of
>> Southern rock since the 1970s. This exchange2 between
>> Lynyrd Skynyrd's Ronnie Van Zant and an Atlanta
>> audience introduces the version of "Freebird" from the
>> 1976 live album "One More From the Road". That cut has
>> been a radio mainstay since the album's release,
>> likely inspiring many more shouts for "Freebird."
>> 
>> Bands don't always welcome the request, though. Mike
>> Doughty had a suggestion for audience members yelling
>> for "Freebird," as captured in this clip3 from the
>> 2002 album "Smofe + Smang: Live in Minneapolis."
>> 
>> Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins tried to shame a
>> "Freebird" heckler known as Ivan into changing his
>> ways with this on-stage lecture4, delivered during a
>> 1993 show in Chicago. Note Ivan's proud
>> self-identification as a KevHead.
>> 
>> And in some cases, entertainers become slightly
>> unhinged when they hear the song title, especially
>> after Chicago DJ Kevin Matthews urged listeners to
>> yell "Freebird." In this clip5, from a Chicago show in
>> the early 1990s, the late comedian Bill Hicks utters a
>> string of expletives in response to an exuberant fan.
>> If you're offended by profanity, don't click on it.
>> 
>> Here are Web sites related to the artists mentioned in
>> this article:
>> 
>> Lynyrd Skynyrd
>> (www.lynyrdskynyrd.com6)
>> The Crimea
>> (www.thecrimea.net7)
>> Dash Rip Rock
>> (www.dashriprock.net8)
>> Mike Doughty
>> (www.superspecialquestions.com9)
>> Jewel
>> (www.jeweljk.com10)
>> Hot Tuna
>> (www.hottuna.com11)
>> Modest Mouse
>> (www.modestmousemusic.com12)
>> Bill Hicks
>> (www.billhicks.com13)
>> Kevin Matthews
>> (www.kevhead.com14)
>> Phish
>> (www.phish.com15)
>> The Dandy Warhols
>> (www.dandywarhols.com16)
>> 
>> -- Jason Fry
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> "Freebird" isn't the Crimea's song; it's from the 1973
>> debut album by legendary Southern rockers Lynyrd
>> Skynyrd. The band's nine-minute march from ruminative
>> piano to wailing guitar couldn't be less like the
>> Crimea's jagged punk-pop. But it was requested
>> nonetheless.
>> 
>> Somebody is always yelling out the title. "I don't
>> know that I've ever seen a show where it hasn't
>> happened," says Bill Davis of the veteran country-punk
>> band Dash Rip Rock.
>> 
>> "It's just the most astonishing phenomenon," says Mike
>> Doughty, the former front man of the "deep slacker
>> jazz" band Soul Coughing, adding that "these kids,
>> they can't be listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd."
>> 
>> Yelling "Freebird!" has been a rock clich? for years,
>> guaranteed to elicit laughs from drunks and scorn from
>> music fans who have long since tired of the joke. And
>> it has spread beyond music, prompting the Chicago
>> White Sox organist to add the song to her repertoire
>> and inspiring a greeting card in which a drunk holding
>> a lighter hollers "Freebird!" at wedding musicians.
>> 
>> Bands mostly just ignore the taunt. But one common
>> retort is: "I've got your 'free bird' right here."
>> That's accompanied by a middle finger. It's a strategy
>> Dash Rip Rock's former bassist Ned Hickel used.
>> According to fans' accounts of shows, so have Jewel
>> and Hot Tuna's Jack Casady. Jewel declines to comment.
>> Mr. Casady says that's "usually not my response to
>> those kind of things."
>> 
>> Others have offered more than the bird. On a recent
>> live album, Modest Mouse's Isaac Brock declares that
>> "if this were the Make-a-Wish Foundation, and you were
>> going to die in 20 minutes -- just long enough to play
>> 'Freebird' -- we still wouldn't play it." Dash Rip
>> Rock often plays "Stairway to Freebird," a mash-up of
>> the Skynyrd epic and Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to
>> Heaven" that Mr. Davis boasts lasts "less than two
>> minutes. ... You're finished before people get mad."
>> 
>> A few years ago, Mr. Doughty started promoting the
>> Weather Girls' "It's Raining Men" as the new
>> "Freebird," asking audiences at his solo shows to call
>> for the disco chestnut instead. Now, he says, he gets
>> yells for both songs at every performance.
>> 
>> A harsh reaction to "Freebird" came from the late
>> comedian Bill Hicks during a Chicago gig in the early
>> 1990s. On a bootleg recording of the show, Mr. Hicks
>> at first just sounds irked. "Please stop yelling
>> that," he says. "It's not funny, it's not clever --
>> it's stupid."
>> 
>> The comic soon works himself into a rage, but the
>> "Freebirds" keep coming. "Freebird," he finally says
>> wearily, then intones: "And in the beginning there was
>> the Word -- 'Freebird.' And 'Freebird' would be yelled
>> throughout the centuries. 'Freebird,' the mantra of
>> the moron."
>> 
>> How did this strange ritual begin? "Freebird" is
>> hardly obscure -- it's a radio staple consistently
>> voted one of rock's greatest songs. One version -- and
>> an important piece of the explanation -- anchors
>> Skynyrd's 1976 live album "One More From the Road." On
>> the record, singer Ronnie Van Zant, who was killed
>> along with two other bandmates in a 1977 plane crash,
>> asks the crowd, "What song is it you want to hear?"
>> That unleashes a deafening call for "Freebird," and
>> Skynyrd obliges with a 14-minute rendition.
>> 
>> To understand the phenomenon, it also helps to be from
>> Chicago. When asked why they continue to request
>> "Freebird," Mr. Hicks's tormentors yell out "Kevin
>> Matthews!"
>> 
>> Kevin Matthews is a Chicago radio personality who has
>> exhorted his fans -- the KevHeads -- to yell
>> "Freebird" for years, and claims to have originated
>> the tradition in the late 1980s, when he says he hit
>> upon it as a way to torment Florence Henderson of
>> "Brady Bunch" fame, who was giving a concert. He
>> figured somebody should yell something at her "to
>> break up the monotony." The longtime Skynyrd fan
>> settled on "Freebird," saying the epic song "just
>> popped into my head."
>> 
>> Mr. Matthews says the call was heeded, inspiring him
>> to go down the listings of coming area shows, looking
>> for entertainers who deserved a "Freebird" and
>> encouraging the KevHeads to make it happen.
>> 
>> But he bemoans the decline of "Freebird" etiquette.
>> "It was never meant to be yelled at a cool concert --
>> it was meant to be yelled at someone really lame," he
>> says. "If you're going to yell 'Freebird,' yell
>> 'Freebird' at a Jim Nabors concert."
>> 
>> 
>> Lynyrd Skynyrd performing in New York City in April
>> 1976.
>> 
>> 
>> Still, Mr. Matthews treasures his trove of recorded
>> "Freebird" moments -- such as baffled comedian Elayne
>> Boosler wondering why the audience is shouting
>> "reverb." And he argues that good bands simply
>> acknowledge it and move on. "The people who are
>> conceited, the so-called artists who get really
>> offended by it, they deserve it," he says.
>> 
>> But did "Freebird" truly start with the KevHeads?
>> Longtime Chicago Tribune music writer Greg Kot says he
>> remembers the cry from the early 1980s. He suggests it
>> originated as an in-joke among indie-rock fans "having
>> their sneer at mainstream classic rock."
>> 
>> Other music veterans think it dates back to 1970s
>> audiences' shouts for it and other guitar sagas, such
>> as "Whipping Post," by the Allman Brothers Band, and
>> "Smoke on the Water," by Deep Purple.
>> 
>> They may all be right: It's possible "Freebird" began
>> as a rallying cry for Skynyrd Nation and a sincere
>> request from guitar lovers, was made famous by the
>> live cut, taken up by ironic clubgoers, given new life
>> by Mr. Matthews, and eventually lost all meaning and
>> became something people holler when there's a band
>> onstage.
>> 
>> But as with many mysteries, the true origin may be
>> unknowable -- cold comfort for bands still to be
>> confronted with the inevitable cry from the darkness.
>> For them, here's a strategy tried by a brave few: Call
>> the audience's bluff. Phish liked to sing it a
>> cappella. The Dandy Warhols play a slowed-down take
>> singer Courtney Taylor-Taylor describes as sung "like
>> T. Rex would if he were on a lot of pills." And Dash
>> Rip Rock has performed the real song in order to
>> surprise fans expecting the parody. For his part, Mr.
>> Doughty suggests that musicians make a pact: Whenever
>> anyone calls for "Freebird," play it in its entirety
>> -- and if someone calls for it again, play it again.
>> 
>> "That would put a stop to 'Freebird,' I think," he
>> says. "It would be a bad couple of years, but it might
>> be worth it."
>> 
>> So what do the members of Skynyrd think of the
>> tradition? Johnny Van Zant, Ronnie's brother and the
>> band's singer since 1987, says "it's not an insult at
>> all -- I think it's kind of cool. It's fun, and people
>> are doing it in a fun way. That's what music's
>> supposed to be about."
>> 
>> Besides, Mr. Van Zant has a confession: His wife
>> persuaded him to see Cher in Jacksonville a couple of
>> years ago, and he couldn't resist yelling "Freebird!"
>> himself. "My wife is going, 'Stop! Stop!' " he
>> recalls, laughing. "I embarrassed the hell out of
>> her."
>> 
>> Write to Jason Fry at jason.fry at wsj.com17
>> 
>> URL for this article:
>> http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111102511477881964,00.html
>> 
>> 
>> Hyperlinks in this Article:
>> (1) http://www.real.com/
>> (2)
>> http://play.rbn.com/?dowjones/wsj/demand/wsj_vid/050315_ls_freebird.rm
>> 
>> (3)
>> http://play.rbn.com/?dowjones/wsj/demand/wsj_vid/050315_md_freebird.rm
>> 
>> (4)
>> http://play.rbn.com/?dowjones/wsj/demand/wsj_vid/050315_sp_freebird.rm
>> 
>> (5)
>> http://play.rbn.com/?dowjones/wsj/demand/wsj_vid/050315_bh_freebird.rm
>> 
>> (6) http://www.lynyrdskynyrd.com/
>> (7) http://www.thecrimea.net
>> (8) http://www.dashriprock.net/pages/1/index.htm
>> (9) http://www.superspecialquestions.com/
>> (10) http://www.jeweljk.com/
>> (11) http://www.hottuna.com/
>> (12) http://www.modestmousemusic.com/
>> (13) http://www.billhicks.com/
>> (14) http://www.kevhead.com/
>> (15) http://www.phish.com/
>> (16) http://www.dandywarhols.com/
>> (17) mailto:jason.fry at wsj.com
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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